Comments on: Toward a Grand Narrative of Civilization

By: Weekly Annotations Round-up (weekly) | Creative Destruction

Weekly Annotations Round-up (weekly) | Creative Destruction — Sun, 06 May 2012 10:38:34 +0000

[...] Toward a Grand Narrative of Civilization | Wild Intent [...]

By: Julio

Julio — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:34:13 +0000

Thank you for your comment. I don’t recall him making the explicit connection. Perhaps another way to look at the tendency to lend at interest is as a natural outgrowth of some intrinsic desire to expand or grow in influence (a la Dawkins). In other words, I’m not so sure the direction of causality is crystal clear.

By: Andrew R. Long

Andrew R. Long — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:19:17 +0000

Does Graeber discuss at all the major side-effect of debt, i.e. that by lending money into existence at interest, we become slave to the growth mindset?

(Arguably, a growth mindset was exactly the right mindset to be in for the last 2,000+ years, but now that we’re coming to the end of the ecosystem it might be worth thinking about how to transition into a different mindset (or, to put it more generally, a different story).)

If you like reading about money and debt I recommend Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics. He can get a little evangelical at times but in the main makes a terrible amount of sense. The book is available for free online.

By: Julio

Julio — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:57:40 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to read it and comment. Do you have any suggestions as to what would be a good place to start?

By: Julio

Julio — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:52:10 +0000

The role of technology now doesn’t really map 1:1 to the role of religion in the middle ages, but you wouldn’t know it the way some business executives treat their IT advisers as priests of some mystical order.

By: Julio

Julio — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 02:47:24 +0000

I mean it in the whole sense of the word, not just “the internet” or information technology. However, these have certainly transformed our relationship to technology.

I go down this path a little further in http://wildintent.com/2011/06/30/faster-is-different

The two posts were not really meant to be related, but there are definitely some emerging unifying themes.

By: Mick

Mick — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:44:26 +0000

Very interesting summary of Graeber and an interesting elaboration on those initial ideas. I suggest you look at Carlota Perez’s work on cycles of technological innovation, and how they alternate with financial cycles. It’s Marxist-influenced, and (therefore) a bit simplistic, but there may be something there for you to connect to.

By: Bill Seitz

Bill Seitz — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:30:16 +0000

When you say “technology”, do you really mean “the Internet” and/or “info technology”? Or the sum total of all new technologies? Or what?

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:40:24 +0000

On the question of technology’s role, it occurs to me that given both growing access to the Internet and this idea of technology kind of replacing religion, that perhaps it mightn’t be too much to hope that enough curious people get science, now that kids can look at Wikipedia…

As I see it, we’re doomed to fall victim to unsustainabilty one way or another, until enough of us have some grasp on reality. Maybe then we’ll have what it takes to figure out how to organise ourselves.

By: Julio

Julio — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:14:02 +0000

In an attempt to better illustrate some of my points, I’ve updated the post with two graphs.